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US President declared the goal to go to the Moon, and do the other things!

In the first mission we only try to get to the Moon. We haven't got a clue how to reach the surface.

We also haven't even got a lander yet.

But we built the largest, most powerful rocket possible!

We will only attempt to fly to the Moon, see how it looks and make new plans once we are there.

Nobody knows how to navigate properly .. so we simply aim the spaceship at the target. This is how travellers reached their destination since millions of years ... it should work in space too.

The rocket was ridiculously overpowered and the spaceship gets fast, very fast! (over 9.000 m/s). And it reaches the Moon in just over 30 minutes. Wow.

But going by direct ascent has a snag .. you need to slow down too! In fact there is some fuel left for the brake maneuvre, but it's miscalculated by a long mile. The burn is much too short .. not nearly enough to slow down.

When it burns out the ship is going still over 7000 m/s.

The ship passes the moon with no hope of ever returning.

The mission was a failure. But we managed a close flyby.
It will be a long way to go before we can land on the surface.

Mission one was a disaster, already from the design .. mission two will follow soon. With better preparation.

After overshooting the target by miles in the first attempt, the second mission will be attempted with better preparation.

First a simple lander. It's very light, which has many advantages, most importantly that it can come down harder before the legs break off.

The major disadvantage is fuel, it will be very terse. A lander with return option would be much heavier. But anyway, I have yet to learn how to make it to the surface, so the return is really not my concern right now.

I practiced a few times and managed to get the craft down in one piece, sometimes at least.

Still don't feel too comfortable that it will make it on the Moon ..

We also designed a new rocket, it need not to be as overdimensionated as the first one.

The first stage should get us into an orbit, the second is for trans lunar flight and decelaration.
The tiny engine in the lander is only needed for the few minutes before touchdown.

First stage is gone, managed to get into some sort of crappy orbit around Kearth. As usual it's much higher, much messier than we wanted, but it will do.

TLI. The advantage of having brought the ship into orbit first is that now we will only need to accelerate a little bit, and still have a lot of fuel left.

That looks half decent. We are in an elliptic orbit that will bring us to the Moon, and will make a turn around it.

But it's not the right angle, missed the target. Shit

The nice thing about physics is that we can turn around Kearth and return as many times as we want until we hit the moon.

After several Moon/Kearth orbits (time acceleration) we finally hit the Moon. What an embarassment for our mission controller.

We are now in the gravitational field of the Moon. It would be nice to circle it a few times but we have no idea how to achieve lunar orbit, so must attempt the landing right away ..

The map already shows where we will hit it.

We begin decelaration.

over 1000km to the lunar surface, still a long way to go.

400km and still lots of time to prepare for the landing. Things will only get hectic when we reach 20km or so, and must get rid of that heavy 2nd stage.

200km, a slow burn so that the descent does not get too fast.

At 60km and 400 m/s, full throttle to slow down.

15.000m. We don't want to separate the 2nd stage yet because there is still a huge amount of of fuel in it. There would be enough to land it on the surface, actually.

7.000m, separation of the 2nd stage, it can crash somewhere below. From now on we will only have that little bit of fuel in the lander ... things WILL get hectic now.

2000m, 25 m/s we are looking very good.

Controlling the descent with the keyboard is really tricky. You need to control throttle and orientation at the same time, one would need three hands to do it right

400m, 3m/s we are looking really good and it looks like we can make it to the surface. There is still over 50% fuel left.

Just when I think I will make it, bad luck strikes. We should have made a perfect landing in that valley. But I want to make it too perfect, concentrate too much on descent rate, and a bit of lateral movement creeps in.
Then, in the last moment a mountain comes in our way.

Shit, lander destroyed. So close. The craft didn't even crash, just tipped over. If I had cut the engine before touchdown I would still have made it.

For my first landing attempt I am still quite satisfied.
The descent was OK, the landing was almost successful, I should only have paid more attention to the terrain.

I need to practice more and build a lander that can come down harder. AND look for the terrain while I struggle with the keyboard to manage the rate of descent etc ..

Up to now the game is free, in the future you will have to pay for it.

Absolutely addictive little game. You can design your own spaceships from a few simple parts, design multiple stages, and fly them with real physics, achieve real orbits etc. It's such a simple idea, but the resulting gameplay is amazing.

The first lunar landing attempt was the expected failure, but it has shown that we are on a good way.

Preparation for a new mission has begun.

The first finding is that our rocket is already up to the job. Here is an image from the assembly hall. It shows the design from the last flight, which can possibly be used again in another mission.

TRIALS

It has also shown that the landing is the biggest obstacle for a successful mission and we realized that the lander was practically uncontrollable.Therefore, the development of a tougher and better controllable lander is of the greatest importance. Lately the facilities have been employed with tests of numerous experimental lander configurations. Three leg, four leg, six leg, eight leg, single engine, multi engine, ascent stages, etc, you name it.

.. but most tests ended with catastrophic results.

So far we haven't found a design that gives us the success rates that we want, but we are making progress.

NEWS FROM THE KOVIETS

Lately there have been a few confusing intelligence reports. Mysterious looking objects have appeared on several images, which have raised concern that the Reds may have begun a moon program of their own.

First there is this object, which is believed to be a mobile weather station. Prof. Braun however insists that it could be a lunar lander.

Some believe this to be a lunar rocket, but it's most certainly just a fair attraction.

Apparently they have been testing some new device, and having problems with it.

As you can see we put eight strong legs on it so that it may hopefully survive a hard landing, and not tip over.

This time we have also thought of the return to Earth. If all goes well the lander would have enough fuel left to take off from the Moon, fly back to Earth, and land with a parachute.

A major problem is that the thrust from the lunar descent engine is so low that the device can not be tested on Earth .. we must learn to fly it on the Moon

More news from the Reds

Pravda has an interesting news story and several pictures that show a completely new spacecraft on the way to the Moon, and over the dark side. Allegedly this was just an unmanned flight, and the astronauts on this "highly successful mission" were just padded dummies. But we suspect that the Koviets have made an unsuccessful attempt to put men on the Moon!!

After extremely time consuming preparations, the next mission is ready. When the sun rises, we will go the Moon again ..

Lander and ascent stage. Weight of the landing craft is 3.7t. This particular lander has never been flight tested on Earth, because it's using a special low thrust engine. We came to believe that the previous lander reached optimal performance only under Earth gravity, and that this lead to the failure on the Moon, where a different power / weight ratio is needed. If the engine is optimal under Earth gravity, it will be too powerful on the Moon, and even tiny adjustments to the throttle will result in the craft going wildly up and down.

Through hard lessons we have we learned how to get to the Moon. Since we have practiced extensively on Earth I am more optimistic about the landing, too.

With a bit of luck we may even make it back, although that is new ground.

We have liftoff.

Kapollo leaves Earth, only 300.000 km to go.

Separation of the first stage.

A final burn that will bring us into Earth orbit.

One of the nicer orbits.

Mission time 1:35

After one Earth orbit and the trans lunar burn, we are on a elliptical orbit to the Moon.

As we are getting into the gravitational field of the Moon, it turns out that the course was accurate enough.

After another braking maneuvre. We are now in Lunar Orbit!

Circling the Moon.

Still circling in lunar orbit, looking for the right time to slow down, and a good landing site.

We slow down and will see where we hit the surface.

This should do. We are now on a descent arc to the lunar surface. The terrain at the landing spot could be a bit rough.

Theoretically we could have tried to land in one of the big craters (darker). Tempting, but this shalll be reserved for our later, scientific missions.

Slowing down at a constant rate of ~65 m/s

Terrain looks ok, at least from up here.

3.000m
Separation of the second stage. It did well, and saved us a lot of fuel for the landing maneuvre.

Stage comes down below us. With our luck we will probably land directly on top of it ..
Terrain still looking good from up here.

The final moments.

The descent engine behaves much better this time, as our scientists have predicted.
In the smaller lunar gravity we can control our descent rate nicely, between 0 and 5 m/s.

And in the final moments of the lunar landing this is crucial.

Cutoff the engine and .. touchdown!
It was so smooth that I hardly noticed a thing.
The ship had hardly any lateral movement, just settled on the ground like a feather.

Also note that we touched down at 275m, not on 0.
A ground radar would have been nice. This could have been one of the reasons for the previous failures.

9:31.56

First successful landing on the Moon.

Turns out that we alighted on a slope and the ship is slowly skidding down.
All the time I was afraid that it would tip over, but it was never critcal, and after ~50m it finally came to a rest

First scientific result: The Moon is grey and boring!

This is our landing spot. It should be nicely situated for the flight back to Earth.

Mission time 9:40. Go for the ascent from the Moon.

Liftoff!!

We directly aim at the Earth and are now on a direct course home. We will not attempt orbits or anything, just brake with our remaining fuel, hit the athmosphere and let it slow us down, then make a splash down somewhere.

One last look back.

Our "collision" course with the home planet.

As the ship enters the athmosphere like a cannonball it becomes clear that I miscalculated the reentry.

We are still going at 2.600 m/s and because of the low thrust of the engine, it will take a long time time to slow down. While we still have enough fuel we began the brake meneuvre much too late. At this speed there it will not be enough time to slow down completely!!

23.000m and only seconds before we hit the ground. The only chance is to jettision everything, and see if the retro pack and the chute can slow us down. I think we may lose the crew, but decide to give it a try.

The retro pack fired and the chute is out, but will it open?

the reentry has slowed us down, we might make it. C'mon.

The parachute opens. We made it!!

The reentry was critical, but we were lucky this time.

Slowly coming down.

We are slowly gliding down on the parachute. I don't think anything can go wrong now.

Splashdown in the ocean!!

The helicopters will pick us up in a few minutes.

Mission statistics. We hit 22G during rentry!!

Mission success!!

While this mission was extremely hazardous and daring, we achieved all important milestones. We landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth.

It appears that between our last two missions, the Reds must have attempted a landing of their own and are covering up their failure.

The object looks like an unknown lander of very interesting design. But it appears very heavy built, and that's probably the reason why it crashed on the Moon.

The Kremlin denies everything and claims that it was just an unmanned test. "The lunar missions of our ideologic enemy were an extreme gamble, and many people have died. We would never attempt such a landing before it is safe."

What can they be up to now, now that we made a succesful landing and return?

My name Aleksei Spermatov. And I chief space engineer of Koviet Union. Today I introduce you to space program. Before: please don't believe lies / propaganda that we were failure! In fact we testing new Landing Apparat!!! When Apparat ready, it will enable scientific work which exceed ANYTHING the capitalist make.

Final low Lunar Polar Orbit, permit study of features from 2000-3000m.

Multiple Impact Bassin over Lunar South Pole

Onteresting canyon / rift structure over South Pole discovered.

Discovery new Krater

Lunar North Pole

Finally attempt hard landing near end of mission timeline.

But transmission loss (framerate). Spaceship go out of control and impact very hard, and crash.

Mission result: another big victory for space program. Achieve first observation of lunar Poles and many hidden features. Currently evaluation of rich scientific data in progress.
Some still top secret.